Day 13 - Gyros at Home

I made gyro's at home! This delicious Greek dish has been a favorite of our for a long time, but whenever we want one - we go to a restaurant (usually Mr. Gyro's) so this past weekend while at Costco when I came across some Tzatziki sauce, I had to buy it. Normally I would make this by scratch, but for the first time making gyros at home I thought this would be a better plan. Especially since I knew I had lamb to cook. But for next time I did want to include a recipe I found by Alton Brown.

Tzatziki sauce:
Yield: 1 1/2 cups

• 16 ounces plain yogurt
• 1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and finely chopped
• Pinch kosher salt
• 4 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
• 5 to 6 mint leaves, finely minced

Place the yogurt in a tea towel, gather up the edges, suspend over a bowl, and drain for 2 hours in the refrigerator. Place the chopped cucumber in a tea towel and squeeze to remove the liquid; discard liquid. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the drained yogurt, cucumber, salt, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, and mint. Serve as a sauce for gyros. Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to a week.

When it came time to select the lamb cut to use for our gyro's, I just made a guess, and selected loin lamb chops. Next time I might try something else, but it was still very tasty & worked well. (Last summer, I saw a cooking show with a recipe for a mint-basil pesto and a Frenched rack of lamb and really wanted to try it - especially with all the fresh mint I had in my garden. This recipe is now a favorite of ours, which I think has a lot to do with why I wanted to try to cook a new cut of lamb for these gyros.)

Marinating the meat in come olive oil, garlic, thyme & rosemary and of course salt & pepper

Next I started with some onion and then pan seared the meat

With the meat cooked & resting, all I had left to do was to chop the onion, cube the tomatoes and slice the cucumber.


When it was time to serve dinner I set out all the gyro fixings, like you would for a taco bar so that we could each assemble our gyro's just how we like.
Let's eat!

~yummy